As Charles Reade began to write It Is Never Too Late to Mend, he developed a method of research and writing that he would use throughout the remainder of his career. In the Memoir, he declares: “The plan I propose to ...

In his Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory portrays Arthur, not as the strong, fully just king of later portrayals, but as a weaker monarch more in keeping with those of fifteenth-century England. Arthur begins well by ...

This study illuminates the influence of two vastly different short story writers on the work of Frank O’Connor: James Joyce and Anton Chekhov. O’Connor vowed never to imitate the Russian master, and yet Chekhov’s theme ...

The children of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hartley, Derwent, and Sara, have received limited scholarly attention, though all were important nineteenth century figures. Lack of scholarly attention on them can be blamed on ...

Early Puritan colonists expressed conflicting views regarding the religious significance of the New World’s natural environment. On the one hand, it was “the Devil’s Territories” that God would transform into “a Mart” to ...

Examining the Harry Potter series through the lens of late Baptist theologian Stanley Grenz and his theories on community as it reflects the triune God, the themes of love and sacrifice in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series ...

Louise Glück’s poetry is known for its affinity for change; each of Glück’s eleven poetic collections intentionally departs from her previous work, and Glück herself has written of her desire not to “repeat” herself. I ...

This study explores the ways in which John Ruskin’s artistic and social criticism illuminate persuasive elements in Wendell Berry’s fiction, primarily his three major novels: A Place on Earth, Hannah Coulter, and Jayber ...

Many people have never visited the American South, but everyone has "seen the movie." For nearly a century, American films have been the chief cultural arbiters of southern regional identity in the popular imagination. ...

Jack Clemo, whose dates are 1916-1994, calls to us from the margins: a working-class voice from deep within in the china clayworks of Cornwall, having been educated outside the conventional system, contending with deafness ...

In Robert Elsmere, Mrs. Humphry Ward addresses the Christological concerns of Victorian England. Robert’s crisis of faith and resulting inability to maintain a belief in the divinity of Christ is juxtaposed against his ...

This dissertation examines the ways in which Victorian novelist and fantasist
George MacDonald re-imagines Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ideas about the religious
function of literary traditions. Each chapter of this project ...

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh author now known almost exclusively for his late nineteenth-century weird horror tales such as The Great God Pan (1894) and The Three Impostors (1895). The few Machen critics who have ...

Ben Jonson’s career gives us an interesting window into English Renaissance censorship, since a number of his plays were scrutinized, altered, or suppressed by the authorities. In response to the critical consensus that ...

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the secularization of American society
poses a unique problem for fiction writers. As a number of scholars in various fields
have established, humans desire and are oriented ...

This thesis uncovers truths and lies in the works of Mark Twain. It examines the way in which Twain's lies of exaggeration bring about truth. In his early newspaper writings, Twain developed a technique of exaggeration ...

Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre share striking parallels in form and content: each is narrated by an introspective yet adventurous narrator who encounters various triggers for his development, including authorities, mysterious ...